I remember when KOTOR came out, I got quite far on a 1 week rental, then had the disk error where your only save is on the Leviathan. In anger, I kept the game a week late, replayed it as an evil character killing everyone possible. Sure, I owed them an extra 20$, but I am glad I did not buy the game, since I saw all of it.

Besides, rental outlets grossly inflate game sales, so he shouldn't be complaining.

The Commissar

One solution would be to make longer games - however then that means the companies must own up to part of the problem instead of just blaming consumers and rental shops.

Limafoxtrot

But that's a small percentage of games. The point of rentals, IMO, is to have a chance to play the games that simply aren't worth $60. A mediocre game that you can get some enjoyment out of, or a good game that's simple, linear, and has no replay value, those are the kinds of games that are perfect for renting, and suggesting that "Try before you buy" is a motivation for renting those is ridiculous.

Jawajoey

In the end, I think this is GOOD for the industry. Whatever is good or bad is relative next to what the market wants.

Edge of Blade

JohnnyLA

But this study is mostly true for me. I never bought super Paper Mario because I got close to the end on a 2 day rental. I figure I can rent it again and have it beat. On the other hand most of my SNES collection started as rentals. but that was before memory cards were the norm.

I think the PS1 is probably when renting went from benefit to liability. When battery saves died.

LuppyLuptonium

CyberSkull

Games don't deserve to be a huge financial success if they can't hold your interest longer than 7 days.

That's not to say that just because you can beat a game within a rental period is bad, or not worth buying, because let's face it, a "hardcore" gamer can be most games in less than 7 days.

I think if you really like a game you won't be left with a sour or unsatisfied taste after beating and thus either want to beat it again longer down the road, or at least have it in your game collection like one would keep a classic movie in their collection only if they watch it a few times.

I don't rent games as much as I would like to and that's a shame, because renting a game and trying it yourself is much more valuable than any reviewer or friend's opinion whether you should own a game or not. Renting games really helps you cipher through the mounds of garbage games that are being released lately.

ninjablaze

James in Dupont

kingofallcosmos

sycodude

But so many games are beatable over a weekend or a week or two.

navstar

Renting isn't bad for sales, the fact that most games aren't worth $60 is.

LeChuck

BMErdin

Do some bought-and-done-with games eventually make it back, however briefly, into play rotation? Sure. But 1 game that sits would have paid for 3 months renting games and limits the duds that I get stuck with.

BMErdin

PlaidNinja

If I felt that I had to be on the bleeding edge all the time, I might rent, but buying games later in their cycle lets you find out if it is worth it and to me a good game is good whenever, whether it is a week, a year, or 20 years after release.

kingofallcosmos

Perhaps I'm not a good member of the Church on Consumerism, but I'm only spending my $60 on something that is going to last me. I'm not a fan of games that become glorified drink coasters after 10 hours of play.

crapsh00t

0starter0

BMErdin

saved us from buying a few stinkers that way (Final Fantasy Mystic Quest springs immediately to mind)

guy_jin

tk.

1. Ignore
2. Rent
3. Buy

I don't rent a game to see if I want to buy it because then I am essentially adding $5 to the price of the game. I rent games that I am mildly interested in but don't feel will have significant enough replay value to warrant ownership.

So, no surprise rentals hurt sales. Make games that I can't get tired of in five days and I'll buy them.

Slothboy

I'll continue to pick up AAA titles like Rock Band and Call of Duty 4, but I'd much rather rent a majority of the stuff out there because it doesn't have much if any lasting appeal after you've beaten the game.

lostalaska

so demos pose the same risk on sales because it eliminates that unknown factor. for example i was gonna buy skate, looked cool, but that's all i knew. rented it and removed all doubt that it was not for me.

therefore buying with no research = good for publishers

sycodude

I think Microsoft and Sony would do their third-party developers and publishers a great service by spreading awareness about free downloadable demos, since the convenience would probably help direct the flow of money to publishers instead of Blockbuster.

Toasticus

sycodude

Renting is probably still better for their sales than people buying used games from Gamestop.

Baramos

greeneggsnsam

andyg8180

i completely agree......but also if Blockbuster didnt buy that game....where did it come from?....im gonna buy Unreal Tournament 3....when i probably get a decent job im gonna buy alot more games...but since my pockets dont have much in them right now id rather pay 8 bucks to play the game.

robinhood1013

LunchBox55

Obviously, the theory behind try before you buy is where you get a taste of the end product and not the full monty.

As such games, demos on XBL, and dating work into the "Try before you buy", but renting and one night stands do not.

Why buy the cow when you can milk it for free?

Lyme

Games that are really short get thrown in the queue, so I can play through them. Games that the graphics look great, but the controls might be horrible, again, they get tossed into the queue.

I own a total of 3 games for my ps3: Resistance, Folklore, and Eye of Judgment (which if I knew how simplistic the winning conditions was, I probably would pass on it.) I currently have Heavenly sword out for the ps3, but have yet to play it. The lions share of my gaming is done on my 360.

Norsehawk

I wouldn't imagine that it works differently for game publishers.

tk.

For starters, the internet. Much more wide spread I hear than it used to be in the NES/Genesis/Snes/SCD days. Even have businesses on it and everything. People can look at videos, check out game info long before the game hits the stores. Reviewers even judge games for free, so if you're ever curious to see what that title got, you can probably know more than the rental store and retailer do the moment it hits the shelves. I think some reviewers even go as far as to say if a title is worth buying or merely renting.

Two, rental periods have increased quite a bit. With the same X rental fee, you usually are getting a game for a good 3-5 days, depending on the store. Some rental places prior only allowed maybe 2-3, though your mileage might have varied. Some even have plans specifically for gamers, to let them check out games for longer periods of time so long as they join a subscription club. So, you're getting more time for your buck from said rental place, and with games getting shorter these days, they're just that much easier to beat.

Three, a lot of rental places sell used titles themselves, which as we know, doesn't mean the developers are seeing that money. Sure, the rental place purchased a few copies, but if they didn't sell them, the only place they could get a copy themselves would be from retail, meaning another copy is sold. Some even have plans offering discounts on games that they rent out.

I think the core problem is that game value as a whole has continued to go downhill for years. Multiplayer options can add to that value, but when you see that the initial price to get into something keeps going up, you might have less to actually spend to enjoy it. Where as 400 dollars might've once bought you a lot, two or three games, and perhaps an extra controller, when that 400 dollars only buys you the system... or worse, doesn't buy you the system, people will have less to add to that system with.

Ampillion, Dayman. Fighter of the Nightman.

I'd say my rentals end up with me buying the game from somewhere about 20% of the time.

zuvembi

Good MP = longevity of game and therefore worth the buy.

Replayable or long game play = worth the buy.

So in order to hook us games will need to start offering additional levels/content to make it worth while to put out $60/$50 dollars per game.

inajeep

@Erwos:
Mike Vorhaus is the Managing Director at Frank N. Magid Associates, the company that _conducted_ the study. The assumption was his to make. And make it he apparently did. He provided the data, he wrote the article, and he wrote the headline (which is actually the most anti-renting portion of the whole post).

@thenino85:
Well, judging by how friends of mine used to work the Sierra adventure games (we had a Trash-80, so getting in on this wasn't even an option for me), each time a new game came out, a different person would buy it, run off a bunch of copies of the floppies and keywords from the instruction booklet, and pass them around to the rest of the group. I know of at least three people who were involved in this group, and there were probably a couple more, so at worst they were only buying 1/3 of the titles they were playing, but someone was still buying every title released. Now, granted, the internet wasn't around back then, and console gaming was _very_ different from PC gaming, so if you were into adventure games there really wasn't much choice but for someone to buy a copy before piwriting was even possible, and even then the copies could very well stay contained within a smallish group. Nowadays, one person can spread a single copy around to thousands of people all over the world.

Purple Dave

Hickeroar

Now for some of my findings. Keep in mind this is my bias, but it explains why I'm such a fan of renting. One, many good games disappear off the shelves after just a few months, sometimes sooner, but my rental service has even hard to find items. Two, I own most of the consoles and handhelds and I was getting tired of buying games that were increasingly turning out to be more hype and less value. At $24/month, I can keep 3 games out at a time compared to a $50 or $60 game that might end up being terrible or something I'm just going to play once. Three, I generally end up buying the AAA titles, but it is amazing how few of those there are a year, so instead I get to taste the mediocre to great titles and not be restricted to just what I could buy. Weak titles like Dewy's Adventure and Lair were rentals that I tried for a bit and sent back to torture some other poor soul, while Super Mario Galaxy got purchased because it is great, it is a long game, and I'll eventually replay it.

Note that I use Netflix as well and buy almost no DVDs or HD DVD and Blu-ray discs anymore. Mostly this is due to too much content, it is highly unlikely I will re-watch any movies and while I watch over ten movies a month, my rental queue always has almost 400 items in it; there is simply too much good content out there for anyone to watch it all, so there is even less reason to watch something more than once.

There are only so many games a year one person can play. If you spend a great deal of time with a single game, like a multiplayer shooter, WoW, etc. then you have even less time to sample the great content. Rentals and used games decrease the total number of copies a given title will sell, but we currently have a glut of game content, so unless our system for weeding out the stinkers improves rentals are a necessary component of the system for the consumer.

kasplat

Wii games definitely seem to lend themselves to rentals, usually because I want to see if they've managed to completely hose up their control scheme, or if the whole title is just a novelty that quickly wears thin.

tk.

Sometimes, I rent a game I know I won't play more than a week's worth, despite the open gameplay (no real end to the game per se, like fighting games). But I will never rent a game I know I wanna buy.
I'd rather wait 2 months to save my money and buy it than rent it and buy it after.

For this reason also, I'll never rent a lengthy RPG, because I know I won't be able to finish it during the week I play (I tend to end up around the 70-100 hour mark in my RPGs...).

I'll rent games that I want to play, but the reviews say it's not that great (Harry Potter on the Wii is a great example... I was REALLY happy not to blind buy that game, it was good as a rental, but I'd have been pissed if I had bought it).

I think the ability to rent games is great, especially in this age where there are so many good games coming out month after month, and also since most games these days can be finished in less than 20 hours.

Mokona

Sudden Device

Gauntlet: Dark Legacy was actually a great game to rent. It was practically designed as a demo with the way your levels, stats, and progress would randomly decrease every time you uploaded your save file.

Mact

That way, you wouldn't have a copy of Chromehounds that you've played ONE TIME. I just signed up for Gamefly. Mass Effect has a yellow nodule next to it that says Low Availability. So does Call of Duty 4. Uncharted has medium availability. However, they sent me Super Mario Galaxy and Heavenly Sword.

That works. I mean, who isn't into chicks with swords and plumbers with stashes? Now, if only they would combine them together. Heavenly Mario. Seeking revenge on something vs the dude who played Gollum.

balgeary

AsWater

There have been many instances of (2 & 3) in my case.

There are a lot of games that really don't have a lot of replay value, despite how much fun I had playing them.

I also tend to rent most sports and racing games because I don't see myself wanting to play them enough to warrant a $50 purchase.

The only thing I don't do is rent portables. I generally always buy or just never play. Not sure why. Probably because the price of renting one is proportionally too large to play to try out and the full investment is too much to take a chance on.

Mact

But... I refuse to purchase a game with less than 10 hours of gameplay (or really strong multiplayer), and anything below 15 or 20 is iffy. I consider anything shorter than that a waste of money.

Trilan

I did however buy Shadowrun. That was a mistake. Played less with that than Gears, and while it was a good game, it got old fast enough.

It makes more sense for me to rent games in most cases.

Oh, and for some reason, Gamefly and the other programs I have tried have accidently messed up and said I returned games before I actually had. Ended up with Crackdown and Call of Duty 3 free.

serotoninzero

edb87

kuzuboshii

"This game is a turd", I say. "Don't let my hard earned cash go to these crap-ass developers."

I'm going to buy the same amount of games regardless of renting, renting just gives lesser known games a chance to get into my wallet.

Islandkiwi

And I know I'm not the only one in that situation.

ShaggE

As far as Demos go, I've played plenty of Demos that seemed pretty good, only to find the full game repetitive and boring in the long run.

3xch4ng3

Throtex

Minister of Fun

Waka in Japan

developer/publisher aren't complaining that they're not making money, they're just complaining that they're not making ALL the money.

3xch4ng3

Syndication will save gaming, I think. Gametap is a good start. The various XBL, PSN, whatever the Wii's thing is called services are kind of half-assed implementations. A subscription that doles out the massive piles of cash being collected based on statistics of play is better than forcing someone to buy 4 games for 20 bucks that they can't be concurrently involved in.

deathbunny

So, while the renting stores don't "help" the industry, they don't hurt it either. Let the boys keep their jobs ok?

Ludwig

If you polled only renters that are twenty one or over, I bet the buy ratio would be somewhat higher. Maybe not a TON higher, but still. I mean, I rented a ton of games as a teen, and bought quite a few of them, when I had the money to do so.

Course, then again, even as a teen I was a bit of an gaming oddity. Went out of my way to find places to rent out Saturn games, and the place I found was willing to sell their games cheap if they weren't terribly new.

WolvenOne

ethic

chainlink13

Funds not getting back to a game's developers is bad...In the long run, this means less risky / innovative titles and less diversity...

Sounds logical, yet some of the most well know, best selling games are those that step outside of the box. I don't think you can conclude creativity springs from profit.

I disagree that studios will take more risks if they're rolling in cash. They'll keep the cash and continue doing what it was that made them the cash in the first place.

Innovation comes from not being able to pay your bills. That's when people think outside the box.

doubtful

For $300 (5 games full price) I rented three at a time for a year from Gamefly and played about 20-30 games this year. I still bought Halo, Mass Effect, COD 4, Orange Box and one or two others, but none were my rentals.

I'm only going to pay for quality AND quantity. I'd rather buy 6 XBLA games than one half-assed retail game at full price.

lionkitten

Daxed

I find it sad that more people don't rent games. It's a bargain: you get to play through hot game X, and you pay a small fraction of what you would normally. Especially if you live where I do. At my local rental place, after about a month of a game being out, the price drops down to $1.87 for one week and $0.47 a day for late fees. Obviously not all games are like this, notably Guitar Hero 2 is still a 2-day rental. That gives me a week to play a game for $2. How could you pass up a deal like that?

@Jordan Lund:
Uh.... if you were going to pirate a game, wouldn't you do it before you spent some money on it?

thenino85

3xch4ng3

nxp3

Torusan

batdrox

Also, 99% of the time I really enjoy a rental I wait till I find it used @ Gamestop 6 months later to buy for my collection.

One factor to the rentals, which happens all the time for me. Would be a LAN party with 360's and we don't have enough copies of Halo or Rainbow 6, so we go out and rent them for the weekend.

3xch4ng3

Renters pirate the game instead.

Jordan Lund

This is why we need to go to completely digital downloads. So the developers can not get screwed from rentals or used copy purchases.

Okay, sorry, I couldn't even write that with a striaght face.

Luis

i buy all my games and movies. You wouldnt borrow someon's sex toy would you? WOULD YOU!?!?!?

VenoMuS

It could also be, at least for me, that I just don't have time for renting games like I did when I was a kid. Now I have games I want to play and those I don't. If I want to play them I'll buy them otherwise I don't even bother giving them a chance except for the off chance I play it at a friend's place.

iameleveneight

NeonJebus

The average gamer does not have the money to buy every game available so they must pick and choose what games to buy. Not having a game rental service does not mean they will buy every game available. Having a game rental service means that some games that would not have been bought by the average gamer, will have been bought to shore up video rental services.

Tepoz

Deadeyereborn

Kublikahn

Ishmae1

Once I beat a game, I will usually never play it again. For this reason I only buy games I rent if:
a) I think one of my friends/siblings will like it, and they have not played it.

b) The game is beyond awesome and deserves my hard earned cash (Bioshock, Okami).

c) I can find it cheap.

LostToys

I would have liked them to include a bit more information about the study they conducted, like how they found their research subjects, and some of the other questions in the study as well. I think this info would give us a bit more insight into the demographics of the subjects and point out some of the inconsistencies in the wording of the questions as well. It even took me a double- or triple-look to actually figure out what the questions was really asking.

chaos242

smitty1123

In other words, some games get my money (through renter royalties) that would never have gotten any of my cash were a rent not available.
Economics - not kneejerkism.

Mrclumpy

JohnMora

Erwos

June

strictnein

SteveBOX360

Often times, you don't.

Or titles like Bioshock, FFXII or what have you, where replay value is equal to that of a single game session. One run through. Then nothing.

Why buy when you've already finished a game?

Renting may be bad for the industry due to lower profits, but for the consumer, we love it. And because money is to be me renting, it is here to stay.

Guess that is one thing PC markets will always have over Consoles, renting is not an option.

huginn

Tepoz

jwrose

Arthois

Foxstar Sixtail

Thinking about all the crap that I've bought though I think I should rent more often though...

Stop

Good research, awful conclusions.

Tonx

Deadeyereborn

Deadeyereborn

Tonx

1) The game sucked. Hard.
2) They beat it.
3) They liked it, but not enough to warrant a buy.

People I know buy games they KNOW they're going to like, and rent games they're unsure about.

lunarworks

Deadeyereborn